Hand Counts Cost Less and are More Accurate
Osage County, Missouri saves $14,000 counting 1,700 ballots—Any county can do this too if their decision makers decide to make a change to restore trust
Linda Rantz recently reported that one of the Osage County, Missouri commissioners shared that $14,000 was saved successfully hand counting 1,700 ballots in their recent April 4 election.
A few hundred miles away in Minnesota, there haven’t yet recently been any hand counts, although at least two townships have expressed a willingness to do them prior to the August 9, 2022 primary and the November 8, 2022 midterm.
In Rick Weible’s presentation (view slides here) on April 11, 2023 at the Monticello Community Center (where on May 7th The Greater Magistrates tour event with David Clements will also take place), copies of emails from Sherburne County to the townships in Sherburne County were shared. Clearly, the county is not in favor of them. So much so that both Haven Township and Baldwin Township stepped back from their decision to hand count. (See slides 31-35 from Rick Weible’s presentation.)
Hand counting alone will not restore trust in the overall process, because there is still the problem of voter registration and voter validation being in the hands of the state and corporations instead of the counties and precincts. Furthermore, even if tabulation (through hand counting) was brought to the precinct level, reporting would still need to happen at the precinct level—reporting at the moment comes from the state and corporations without proper checks.
Yesterday’s Conservative Daily show featuring Kris Jurski with David and Erin Clements did a deep dive on Florida to show how even if there were audits, VR systems, which is the final arbiter, can control the results and what is shown the public. Minnesota’s version of that centralization is starting to happen when it is considered how KnowInk (which recently purchased BPro), SeaChange (ballot printing), and ES&S interlink.
Further centralization renders nearly useless the current post-election reviews on top of the existing known vulnerabilities at multiple stages of the process, from voter registration, to voter validation, to tabulation, to reporting.
I remember speaking with one of the Haven Township supervisors after a nearly 4 hour meeting on a Monday night in June of 2022 where Rick Weible was a special presenter. He told me, If he didn’t get to hand count, then he wasn’t keen on certifying. Election integrity advocates like Kari Watkins were there also (Kari has been so effective that she was illegally withdrawn from the 2022 midterm ballot.)
When the supervisor shared this with me, that was a big moment (lightning flashed across the sky as rain started to fall at 11pm). It showed that decision makers like that supervisor are listening, learning, and want to use their authority to protect voters from the major problems exposed by regular citizens and experts alike all across this country. I see more and more come to events and more and more reach out to me each day.
Word travels quickly when viable alternatives are shut down (like the hand counts in Baldwin and Haven) or when a desired show of transparency is delayed for going on three years in almost every county in Minnesota. (Jeffrey O’Donnell’s recent “Fingerprints of Fraud” showcased only one county’s cast vote record, Fillmore County, because almost every other Minnesota county has refused or been unable to provide the public cast vote record, a standard in voting machines going back to 2005.) This alone demonstrates a complete failure of the most basic transparency since this report is a simple, automatic internal (and independent) audit of the machine’s vote tabulation by itself.
With alternatives like the following becoming available to any county that wants to use them, the excuses are running out for decision makers to do the right thing and restore public trust in elections.
Event Reminder
Yesterday Erin and David Clements joined Kris Jurski on Conservative Daily.
Near the end, I liked that Erin and David laid out 3 overall ways to subvert election, 1) election file, 2) direct manipulation (such as this demonstrated by Mark Cook in this video starting at 18m30s), and 3) elegant upstream manipulation (outside the purview of election clerks and officials).
The nationwide patterns seen in cast vote records analyzed and summarized by Jeff O’Donnell in “Fingerprints of Fraud” is proof systems were compromised across the country in an eerily similar way.
I also agree with Erin and David’s parting words on thinking like the enemy and election advocates’ real-time understanding being realized sooner and sooner rather than getting to the crime scene too late.
For May 7 in Monticello: We have 76 seats reserved - goal is to get to 100 or more but also focusing on who can help us move the needle and trying to get them there—that means PLEASE invite your local elected officials, in particular your county commissioners, city council members, township supervisors, election clerks, and auditor/treasurers. The room holds 150—let’s fill it up to learn from David Clements.
One more time (and to share with elected officials):
David will walk people through the entire voting process, input to output, identify the vulnerabilities, then provide proof of the vulnerabilities exploited. We then provide a prescription of local advocacy.
